I’ve been hunting for a great MacBook Pro replacement since early 2017 and while I’ve been happy with my switch to a desktop machine at home, it’s been an interesting journey trying to find something that’s on the same all-around hardware and software experience on the laptop side.

Over the past year I’ve spent time with the Razer Blade, Dell XPS 15 and the Eve V, which are all stellar machines, but I didn’t quite feel at home yet. These are fantastic machines that do the job well, but always left something wanting, which I figured I’d need to settle for.

I’m back to say I was wrong, and I’ve found a machine that not only matches Apple’s standard of hardware quality, but goes far beyond it to demonstrate how a laptop of the future should work.

That machine is the 15-inch Surface Book 2 and somehow Microsoft has made the 2-in-1 that Apple should’ve been building all along, to the same level of quality I’d expect from anyone other than Microsoft.

I’ve used the Surface Book 2 as my daily computer for three months now and it’s consistently blown me away with how well considered it is across the board, how great the software works and has completely converted me into the touchscreen laptop camp.

Owen’s reviews (there are more available at the links above) are thorough and practical. His posts have been quite helpful as I transition away from the Mac, and I highly recommend them if you’re considering the same.

As for me, the XPS 15 is doing great, and I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Surface Go next month. I’ll let you know how it works once I’ve used it for a bit.

On his blog, Jack Baty writes about his recent experiments with Arch Linux on an older ThinkPad:

It’s the idea of Linux that I love. Wall to wall freely distributed, open source software is such a cool thing. Being free from reliance upon any one particular vendor is a great feeling. Having endless choices for how the operating system and software behave is liberating. I like having a variety of hardware options and not being stuck with a brand new laptop with the shittiest keyboard in the world. And I must admit, I don’t mind the nerd creds that using something like Arch provides. It makes me feel like I’m zagging, and I like zagging.

Read the rest for his impressions and where he’s going from here. My challenges have been similar, but they’re taking me in a slightly different direction.